Method of analytic continuation for the inverse spherical mean transform in constant curvature spaces

Abstract

The following problem arises in thermoacoustic tomography and has intimate connection with PDEs and integral geometry. Reconstruct a function f supported in an n-dimensional ball B given the spherical means of f over all geodesic spheres centered on the boundary of B. We propose a new approach to this problem, which yields explicit reconstruction formulas in arbitrary constant curvature space, including euclidean space ℝ n , the n-dimensional sphere, and hyperbolic space. The main idea is analytic continuation of the corresponding operator families. The results are applied to inverse problems for a large class of Euler-Poisson-Darboux equations in constant curvature spaces of arbitrary dimension.